Ben Affleck to Co-Write and Direct the Next Batman Movie

By  · Published on July 9th, 2015

Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment

Update: According to Deadline, ahead of this weekend’s Comic-Con panel, Affleck is indeed directing and also co-writing the next solo Batman movie. But the other screenwriter will be DC bigwig Geoff Johns, not Chris Terrio. The movie will shoot after Affleck’s next directorial effort, Live for Night, which was greenlit this week.

Some interesting rumors involving the DC Cinematic Universe have arrived a couple weeks ahead of Comic-Con, which is where Warner Bros. and DC might be planning to officially announce the big news. Here’s what we’re hearing from some fairly trustworthy sites:

Firstly, there’s word that a new solo Batman movie will arrive as soon as 2018. According to Latino Review, Ben Affleck will follow his appearances in next year’s double shot of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad and 2017’s Justice League Part One with his own unaccompanied spinoff venture, reportedly titled The Batman.

Affleck is also said to be directing the Caped Crusader feature from a script by his Oscar-winning Argo collaborator, Chris Terrio (also a writer on BvS and maybe the Justice League movies). The release date will be November 2, 2018, which Marvel already has down for Captain Marvel. Showdown!

Warner Bros.

The next rumor, via Collider, concerns the next Green Lantern solo movie, which apparently won’t be a solo movie at all. No, the title hero won’t be joined by a bunch of other DC superheroes (well, seeing as how the DCCU is going to far, he probably will be – especially after the last Green Lantern movie did so poorly, we can expect Affleck’s Batman to show up in this, too). He will be joined by other Green Lanterns. Earth-based Green Lanterns, even.

We expect to see at least one Green Lantern in the two Justice League movies (due in 2017 and 2019) before the Green Lantern reboot arrives in 2020, but that later installment is said to be including at least two, maybe three human representatives of the Green Lantern Corps: Hal Jordan (the main character, played by Ryan Reynolds in the 2011 movie), Jon Stewart and Guy Gardner.

That could please all fans at once, or it could upset all fans at once for not committing to any of them – especially given that fans of Stewart will see it as a cop-out attempt at appeasing to that crowd. It also could be too much, too confusing for those of us not as familiar with the comics and characters.

Latino Review adds to that scoop that one of those Green Lanterns, probably Jordan, will be played by Chris Pine. Yes, we recently heard that Pine has already joined the DCCU as Wonder Woman’s love interest, Steve Trevor, but that was allegedly a red herring. Pine is really on board for the superhero role he’d been rumored for way back when.

Hopefully we hear confirmations on some of these rumors from San Diego when WB and DC make their big presentation the weekend of July 10th.

This post was originally published on June 24, 2015.

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Christopher Campbell began writing film criticism and covering film festivals for a zine called Read, back when a zine could actually get you Sundance press credentials. He's now a Senior Editor at FSR and the founding editor of our sister site Nonfics. He also regularly contributes to Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes and is the President of the Critics Choice Association's Documentary Branch.